Multiple airstrikes hit Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis overnight killing more than 50 people in a second consecutive night of heavy bombing, while another airstrike in the north of the Palestinian territory left more than a dozen people dead, authorities said.
The strikes come as U.S. President Donald Trump visits the Middle East, visiting Gulf states but not Israel. There had been widespread hope that Trump’s regional visit could usher in a ceasefire deal or renewal of humanitarian aid to Gaza. An Israeli blockade of the territory is now in its third month.
An Associated Press cameraman in Khan Younis counted 10 airstrikes on the city overnight into Thursday, and saw numerous bodies taken to the morgue in the city’s Nasser Hospital. It took time to identify some of the bodies due to the extent of their injuries. The hospital’s morgue confirmed 54 people had been killed.
The dead included a journalist working for Qatari television network Al Araby TV, the network announced on social media, saying Hasan Samour had been killed along with 11 members of his family in one of the strikes in Khan Younis.
It was the second night of heavy bombing, after airstrikes Wednesday on northern and southern Gaza killed at least 70 people, including almost two dozen children.
Another strike in Jabaliya in northern Gaza hit a complex including a mosque and a small medical clinic, killing 13 people, said the Civil Defense, a first responder agency operating under Gaza’s Hamas-run government.
Mourning for the dead in Khan Younis
In Nasser Hospital, Safaa Al-Najjar, her face stained with blood, wept as the shroud-wrapped bodies two of her children were brought to her: 1 1/2-year-old Motaz Al-Bayyok and 1 1/2 month-old Moaz Al-Bayyok.
The family was caught in the overnight airstrikes. All five of Al-Najjar’s other children, ranging in ages from 3 to 12, were injured, while her husband was in intensive care.
One of her sons, 11-year-old Yusuf, his head heavily bandaged, screamed in grief as the shroud of his younger sibling was parted to show his face.
“I gave them dinner and put them to sleep as usual, it was a normal day. Suddenly I don’t know what happened, the world went upside down,” she said as others tried to comfort her. “I don’t know, I don’t know … what is their fault? What is their fault?”
Outside the hospital, mourners gathered to pray as the dead, laid out in rows in white body bags, were loaded onto a truck to be taken for burial.
Israel has vowed to escalate the war
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed earlier in the week to push ahead with a promised escalation of force in Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip to pursue his aim of destroying the Hamas militant group, which governs Gaza.
In comments released by Netanyahu’s office Tuesday, the prime minister said Israeli forces were days away from entering Gaza “with great strength to complete the mission … It means destroying Hamas.”
International rights group Human Rights Watch said Thursday that Israel’s stated plan of seizing Gaza and displacing hundreds of thousands of people “inches closer to extermination,” and called on the international community to speak out against it.
The war began when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in an Oct. 7, 2023 intrusion into southern Israel. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were combatants. Almost 3,000 have been killed since Israel broke a ceasefire on March 18, the ministry said.
The Health Ministry said Thursday morning that the bodies of 82 people killed in Israeli strikes, including the 54 in Khan Younis, had been brought to hospitals in the past 24 hours. The overall Palestinian death toll rose to 53,010, with another 119,998 people wounded.
Hamas still holds 58 of the roughly 250 hostages it took during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, with 23 believed to still be alive, although Israeli authorities have expressed concern for the status of three of those.
Gaza’s only hospital providing cancer treatments out of service due to Israeli strikes
Gaza’s Health Ministry said Thursday that Israeli strikes have rendered the European Hospital Khan Younis — the only remaining facility providing cancer treatments in Gaza — out of service due to severe damage to its infrastructure and access roads.
The shutdown halts all specialized treatments, including cardiac surgeries and cancer care, the ministry added.
The Israeli military conducted two airstrikes against the European Hospital Tuesday, saying it was targeting a Hamas command center beneath the facility. Six people were killed in the strike.
European Hospital director Imad al-Hout told AP there had been 200 patients in the hospital at the time of Tuesday’s strikes. They were all gradually evacuated, with the last 90 transferred to other hospitals, including Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, on Wednesday morning. Efforts were now underway to coordinate repairs to the facility, he added.
Israeli blockade of aid into Gaza in its third month
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
At least 26 Palestinians, including eight children, were killed on Sunday in a series of Israeli attacks targeting displaced civilians across the Gaza Strip, medics said.
Two Palestinians were killed, and others injured, when an Israeli drone struck a group of civilians in the central city of Deir al-Balah, a medical source told Anadolu.
Two more people were killed in the same city; one in a drone strike and the other from injuries sustained in an earlier attack, the source said.
In the southern city of Khan Younis, a Palestinian and his son were killed in a strike targeting a tent for displaced civilians, another medical source said.
Four more Palestinians, including two children, were killed and several others injured in another drone attack on a tent in the city’s western part.
An Israeli strike also targeted a second tent near the city of Asdaa in the Al-Mawasi area northwest of Khan Younis, killing four more people, including two children.
A separate attack on a third tent in the same area killed a child, while a young man was killed in a drone strike on a nearby bicycle, according to Palestinian medics.
Eyewitnesses said eastern Khan Younis, especially the town of Abasan al-Kabira, came under intense Israeli artillery shelling and gunfire.
Medics said Israeli artillery shelling killed a Palestinian child in Gaza City, and another civilian was seriously injured in Jabalia in northern Gaza.
Four more people were killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting a vehicle in Khan Younis, while five others, including a young girl, lost their lives in another attack in Gaza City, medical sources and witnesses told Anadolu.
Separately, in Gaza City, the Israeli army continued demolishing residential buildings in eastern neighborhoods amid ongoing airstrikes and artillery fire on the Al-Tuffah district.
Two Palestinians were also injured in an Israeli airstrike on a mosque on Old Gaza Street in Jabalia, according to local medics.
More than 52,800 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in a brutal Israeli onslaught since October 2023, most of them women and children.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Israel will never let Iran get nuclear weapons: Netanyahu
Israel has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months despite President Donald Trump telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US was for now unwilling to support such a move, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Israeli officials have vowed to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and Netanyahu has insisted that any negotiation with Iran must lead to the complete dismantling of its nuclear programme.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Israel’s forces again attack so-called ‘safe zone’ of al-Mawasi
Al-Mawasi was among the areas targeted by the latest Israeli strikes, which have killed more than 50 people on Saturday, reported Al Jazeera.
What we need to know about al-Mawasi is that it is considered an international humanitarian zone. It is also a zone where Palestinians have been ordered by Israeli forces to evacuate.
………………………….
An Israeli military helicopter has attacked a tent housing displaced Palestinians in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killing at least five people, according to Al Jazeera.
Medical sources in Gaza have told Al Jazeera that at least 64 people have now been killed in Israeli raids across the Strip since dawn on Friday.
Medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least 70 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since dawn on Friday and casualties continue to mount.
The UN’s World Food Programme issues an urgent warning that “Gaza needs food now” as hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of hunger.
